A federal judge on Friday prolonged a block on the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at restricting mail-in voting for the midterm elections, creating another significant setback for the administration just as the first states start mailing ballots to voters.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction that takes the place of her earlier temporary order, which had halted the Postal Service’s planned changes.
The Trump administration has already turned to the Supreme Court in an effort to overturn Talwani’s temporary ruling, and it is widely expected to challenge this new decision as well.
But the window for making sweeping changes to election procedures is narrowing quickly. North Carolina began mailing its first ballots on Friday, with additional states expected to follow in short order.
The dispute could carry major consequences for the 2026 midterm elections, where control of Congress is on the line. Roughly one in three U.S. voters casts a ballot by mail, and election administrators argue they do not have enough time to overhaul their systems to meet the Postal Service’s new requirements.
Talwani, an appointee of President Barack Obama, emphasized the compressed election calendar in her decision.
“Plaintiff States are required under state law to mail millions of ballots to voters on a prescribed timeframe. As detailed below, they are unable to pivot this late in the election cycle, nearly guaranteeing significant disenfranchisement for eligible voters,” she wrote.
The White House did not immediately provide a response to a request for comment.
The order allows states to voluntarily use the new Postal Service system. To date, not a single state has announced that it will do so.
Trump has long sought to limit mail voting, even though he himself often uses that method to cast his own ballot. He has falsely blamed mail balloting for his 2020 election loss, spreading baseless claims of fraud, but has so far been unable to change the longstanding voting procedure.
An initial executive order Trump issued last year to change election rules, including a requirement for people to show documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, was halted by federal judges. They ruled that the Constitution gives states and, in some cases, Congress the power to set voting procedures, not the president.
After Trump issued his mail voting executive order in March, Democrats and voting rights groups filed several lawsuits. Two ended up before Talwani, who placed an initial hold on the order in June, prohibiting its implementation until after November.
But the Supreme Court late last month overturned that order. Its conservative majority pointedly did not say Trump’s move was legal but found the lawsuits were filed prematurely before the Postal Service issued its rule on how it would implement the order. The rule came out just before the Supreme Court released its ruling, and the plaintiffs re-filed their suits.
